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Lawmakers have until July 1 to find $115M in road projects

Top Republican lawmakers have less than two weeks to come up with a new list of priority road projects to fund, but it’s not clear if they can come up with enough projects in time.

A supplemental funding bill signed by Gov. Rick Snyder in March again gave the Legislature the authority to award $115 million to various road projects of their choosing across the state.

Specifically, the law says; “Projects shall be obligated and construction shall be underway or design work shall be completed by July 1, 2014.”

Local government groups and transportation advocates take that to mean that at this point, due to the pending deadline, the only projects lawmakers could fund with this money are ones that have already been fully engineered and are simply awaiting the money to begin turning dirt. That means some projects that could receive funding may not be of the highest priority, but are ones that are the most ready to begin.

Even then, the money would not arrive to fund those projects until the first week of August, due to the timing of monthly state funding disbursements, said Kurt Weiss, spokesman for the Department of Technology, Management and Budget.

Advocates fear the announcement of this money by July 1 will be used by lawmakers to show they are funding the roads, after failing to come up with a structural and long-term transportation funding solution before they adjourned last week to begin a 12-week summer break.

If the legislative leadership cannot find enough projects to fund by July 1, the law stipulates that any money not used for priority road projects has to flow through the traditional funding formula the state uses to provide dollars to local municipalities, counties and road agencies.

That would be just fine with several groups representing those interests, who think the idea of the legislative leadership of one party choosing which road projects are funded and which are not is a bad one and that those decisions should be left up to the experts at the Michigan Department of Transportation and local government level.

“We would prefer the money goes through the formula for sure,” said Monica Ackerson Ware, communications and development manager for the County Road Association of Michigan. “There were some jurisdictions last time that didn’t receive any revenue. If you’re earmarking projects the way you do in Washington, it’s not good public policy.”

Dave Murray, Snyder’s deputy press secretary, said since lawmakers have not submitted a list of projects, “it seems increasingly unlikely any projects will make that deadline.”

This is a fairly new concept in road funding in the state, used last year but prior to that it had been more than a decade. Traditionally, MDOT and local units of government receive funding from the state and decide on their own which roads to fix.

Priority projects enable some communities to fix a road or bridge that it otherwise would not have had the money to fix. Some of the projects can cost several million dollars. If the state simply put more money into the funding formula, a community might receive just a fraction of what it needs to complete just one project.

But the process also injects politics into the decision-making.

As Crain's reported in March, the last time the Republican leadership allocated money for priority road projects, it spent it almost entirely in districts represented by Republicans. Of the 108 projects funded across the state last year, just two were requested by Democrats.

Lawmakers say this time the funding will be handed out more evenly because they invited Democrats to take part in the process.

“We really think having priority lists politicizes the way money is distributed,” said Lance Binoniemi, vice president of government affairs for the Michigan Infrastructure & Transportation Association. “Roads are a bipartisan issue and it needs to continue to be a bipartisan issue.”

House and Senate leadership seem to be of different minds when it comes to what to do with the $115 million available for priority projects.

Anna Heaton, deputy press secretary for House Speaker Jase Bolger, R-Marshall, said lawmakers are still working to prioritize a list of projects, but given the amount of time left to do so, it’s possible they might not find enough projects to fund.

“The time frame is getting shorter,” she said.

Heaton said what Bolger has heard from the public is that people don’t just want patchwork maintenance repairs on the roads; they want roads in the most desperate need of repair to actually be fixed.

A Plan B scenario would be a hybrid plan, where they fund the projects they can, she said, and send the rest of the money into the funding formula to be spread across the state.

But Amber McCann, press secretary for Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, said the Senate has been actively working to finalize a list by July 1 that would utilize all of the money, rather than have a portion go into the state’s funding formula.

McCann said they have been working with members of both sides of the aisle on projects in their districts to find the ones that are in most need of funding.

“We are focusing on the projects that are as close to being executed as possible,” she said.

John LaMacchia, legislative associate for the Michigan Municipal League, said these one-time solutions are not the answer and the MML is indifferent to whether this money should go toward priority projects or spread across the state.

“The effort and the time should be spent on finding a long-term solution,” he said.